Welsh Journals

HISTORICAL NOTES ON THE STUDY OF MEGALITHIC AND BRONZE AGE SITES AND FINDS FROM CEREDIGION Summary Accounts of discoveries mainly of Bronze Age sites and artifacts, from the seventeenth century to the present day are discussed in detail. It is shown that researching obscure printed and MSS. sources may greatly enhance information only otherwise available from fieldwork. Sites continue to be destroyed and to be discovered at the present day. The introduction of archaeology to school teaching curricula would result in greater public awareness of local prehistoric archaeology. Introduction During the compilation of the chapter relating to the Bronze Age, due to appear in the forthcoming County History, the writer encount- ered numerous references in the antiquarian topographical literature, and among Mss. sources. It is felt that collectively these help provide a picture of the development of prehistoric archaeology in West Wales to warrant their treatment in an historic narrative, which would also serve as a sufficiently critical introduction to the sources, to assist workers in cognate fields of archaeology and local history within the county. The essay comprises four basic parts, devoted roughly to the eight- eenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the final part being a more general consideration of the state of local prehistoric archaeology, and of its future. i. From Lhuyd to Meyrick Sadly, the county possessed no later medieval topographer like the Pembrokeshire antiquary, George Owen of Henllys. It is therefore to Edward Lhuyd, at one time erroneously thought to have been one of the sons of the county, that we must turn for the earliest collections of observations, mainly taken at first hand or from correspondents, of prehistoric sites and finds. His parochial collections for an intended topography of Wales, contain some of the earliest references to pre- historic monuments and artifacts from the Principality.1 In Cardigan- shire, besides mentioning several hillforts, Lhuyd listed several monu- ments unmistakably of the Bronze Age, some possibly of earlier origin, and others traditionally ancient in local lore. Most of the references are to parishes in the south, though whether through some preference of the informants he chose, through contempo- rary difficulties of communication in the northern part, or simply because the manuscripts have not survived, it is impossible to tell.